wiki as a tool for learning the english language and its

WIKI AS A TOOL FOR LEARNING
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND ITS
IMPACT ON THE INTRINSIC
MOTIVATION OF STUDENTS AT THE
UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL
M. Jovic1, V. Stevanovic2
1College of Agriculture and Food Technology Prokuplje (SERBIA)
[email protected]
2College
of Agriculture and Food Technology Prokuplje (SERBIA)
[email protected]
INTRODUCTION
The modern age and the rapid development
of science and technology bring changes in
all aspects of human life.
 Students are growing up with the Internet
and modern technology and a teacher has
to adapt his work and methods to their
interests.
 Modern teacher must have program,
educational, communication and computer
competencies.
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INTRODUCTION
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There are many online resources for
learning English, which is daily enriched with
new and innovative features.
A great number of free web tools to
integrate these resources and the demands
of the curriculum are also available on the
Internet.
The task of the teacher is to create a
stimulating learning environment, facilitate
positive transfer of knowledge, provide
communication between student-teacher, as
well as communication among students.
WIKI AS E-LEARNING TOOL
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e-learning is a system of procedures,
processes and teaching materials, which
provide the versatility and effectiveness of
learning as individual and social activities,
which is not only the procedures in the
school system, but an activity of
development of the entire community and
a part of the professional development of
different profiles individuals.
WIKI AS E-LEARNING TOOL
Forms of e-learning:
 Online teaching that is exclusively carried out
using computers and ICT;
 Hybrid Learning and blended learning
(b-learning) is an enrichment of the traditional
classroom with visualization of specific topics
with the help of computers, the use of new
media and educational software to facilitate
the combination of traditional and modern;
 Learning in virtual classrooms.
High quality e-learning is characterized by:
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a high level of interactivity,
integration,
simulation and
animation,
multimedia support,
integration with classroom learning and
the development of hybrid learning systems,
support with various e-materials in different
formats, to make joint foundation of student
learning and teacher, learning management
system by web.
ways of applying wikis in the classroom
Can be used to create web pages, because there
is the ability to easily add pages and their
navigation;
 Collecting data and learning materials;
 Making presentations and articles by the group,
each of them do their part, set the wiki, the next
to take on, added their part, etc.
 Development of projects and tasks, in which
students work in groups, and teacher directs
team work and individual contributions; while
during the work it can be commented and after
completion of the task, evaluation can be made,
and also the peer evaluation.
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INTRINSIC AND EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION
IN WEB 2.0 SURROUNDING
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Motivation can be divided into external
(extrinsic) and internal (intrinsic).
External motivation can be achieved through
the identification, when people identify with
the personal importance of a behavior and
accept it as their own rule.
Internal motivation comes from the personality
and its interest in the content being taught,
curiosity, quasineeds (intellectual tension that
creates by an interesting problem) or due to
cognitive dissonance.
The teacher will increase intrinsic motivation
by encouraging autonomy and student
competitions.
When we combine the motivational needs of
students and the opportunities provided by Web 2.0
technologies, an enabling environment for the
implementation of computer-assisted language
learning (CALL) is created.
 Students have an opportunity, based on their skills
and knowledge of other students, to develop their
own learning strategies and find solutions that make
it the most effective way led to the goal.
 The teacher in this case has a role to initiate the
process of analysis and synthesis of the appropriate
scope of instructions and explanations.
 This means that the teacher should not provide
ready-made solutions, but rather to suggest ways and
resources that students could lead to a solution.
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Teacher plays the role of:
moderator,
 monitors on the activities,
 valuates,
 criticizes and
 praise and directs the course of making
the task.
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RESEARCH ORGANIZATION
The research was conducted during teaching the subject
English Language in the summer semester of 2012/13
academic year with the students of the first year of study at
the College of Agriculture and Food Technology in
Prokuplje.
 These students are on the undergraduate level and English
is a foreign language to them (L2).
 In addition to the general knowledge of the language
(reading, writing, comprehension, grammar), the curriculum
is planned to study the concepts and areas related to
agriculture, because these students are educated for the
future profession in agricultural engineering.
 This course is being taught in classrooms equipped with
white board, computer, projector and wireless Internet.
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Based on previous experience of teaching
and interviews with students, it was found
that most of them determine as a goal to
pass the exam at the end of the semester.
 A few of them show desire to invest greater
effort and gain higher mark or acquire new
knowledge and improve the previous one.
 This situation clearly indicates the existence
of almost exclusively extrinsic motivation,
and that intrinsic motivation is very low.
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Therefore, it was assumed that the
encouragement to work independently and
build knowledge with socializing and peer
collaboration significantly influenced the
increase of the students’ intrinsic motivation.
It was hypothesized that the introduction of blearning and the use of ICT in education, as a
supplement of classical teaching in the
classroom, contributing to the strengthening of
motivation and positive attitudes of students
towards learning.
As the most suitable for this purpose, was used
wiki as e-learning tool.
Students were divided into two groups with
similar characteristics.
 The criteria for students were average score in
high school and mark in the English language in
high school.
 These data are taken from the survey that
students complete during enrolment in high
school.
 One group (control) consisted of students of
the study program Field and Vegetable Crops,
and the other (experimental) group consisted
of students of the study program Fruit
Growing and Viticulture.
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Table 1. Students' average score and mark
in English at the end of secondary school
•Group 1 was consisted students of the study program Field and Vegetable Crops
and in group 2 were students of the study program Fruit Growing and Viticulture.
•The ordinal number of the student is entered in the first line, in line two is
average rating of overall achievement in secondary school, and row 3 is the grade
in English during the final year of secondary school.
•In the last column are given the average values of secondary education and
evaluation of the subject English Language and on that basis it can be concluded
that both groups initially have similar characteristics.
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The first group was taught only in a traditional
teaching method, while the second group was
given access to the wiki page PBworks (Fig. 1) on
http://engleskijezikvppspk.pbworks.com
Figure 1. The main wiki page
Wiki task
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Two tasks for students were set up on the wiki. Time limit of
one month was given for the realization of each task. Students
were divided into four groups: two groups numbered five
members, and two groups numbered six members. The first
task consisted in creating the dictionary and the second task
was project realization on the topic of growing fruit crops.
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Tasks were rated after they were completed and students
were given credits for group work and individual
contributions to the development of the project. Quality of
successfully completed tasks and individual contribution were
ranked by the students, because after the completion, all tasks
were placed in a common folder for evaluation.
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Student evaluation was performed by doing two tests during
the semester and a final exam at the end of the semester.
RESULTS
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At the start of the research, the assumption was
that the introduction of wiki as an additional
teaching resource will result in increased intrinsic
motivation of students, which should be manifested
through their success in getting better marks in
English at the end of the semester.
The students’ achievement was ranked in the
following manner:
grade 6 - sufficient,
grade 7 - good,
grade 8 - very good,
grade 9 -excellent and
grade 10 – excellent-outstanding.
Table 2. Evaluation of Group 1 at the
end of the semester
Group 1
Grade
Number of
students
6 7 8 9 10
Sum
Average
score
10 3 3 2 0
18
6.83
The overall success at the end of the semester for the group 1,
(Field and Vegetable Crops)
Table 3. Evaluation of Group 2 at the
end of the semester
Group 2
Grade
Number of
students
6 7 8 9 10
Sum
Average
score
3 4 7 6 1
21
7.90
Results for the experimental Group 2 (Fruit Crops and Viticulture)
Chart 1. Comparative review of the results of
the control and experimental groups
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Comparing the results of the two groups at the beginning of
the semester (when the mean score of the group 1 was 0.22
lower than the mean score of the group 2) and the results at
the end of the semester (when the group 2 has an average
score of 1.07 more than the group 1), we can see that the
group 2 achieved significantly better results in the subject
English Language during the semester.
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More than half of the experimental group students
achieved an average or above-average score on the final
exam, which can be attributed to a higher level of
intrinsic motivation.
From the survey, completed after the exam, it can be
concluded that the students were highly motivated to
use wikis in teaching and showed interest in a similar
way to the realisation of teaching other subjects.
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CONCLUSION
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E-learning is a very broad term that includes all
methods and techniques for teaching with the help
of computers and the Internet. The user can access
the contents, individual, without spatial and
temporal constraints and thus organize their
learning with the place and time that suits them.
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For the implementation of e-learning it is necessary
to form a stimulating learning environment,
knowledge transfer from teacher to student, the
possibility of communication between teachers and
students, as well as communication among
students.
CONCLUSION
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E-learning tools which support Web 2.0 technology are
designed for collaborative learning. Within these tools,
teacher creates training materials, develops tasks for
individual and group work and monitors student
engagement, their creativity and progression in learning.
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Learning under the influence of intrinsic motivation
increases the durability of the memory contents, the
contents are interesting, adopted without stress and with
pleasure. Once approved, these facilities are more
memorable, well-connected and easily applied in practice.
CONCLUSION
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Using the wiki tool in teaching English motivates students and
teachers, encourages their creativity and cooperation and
gives them the ability to work as team members and as
individuals, and to participate actively in building their
knowledge and improving their own skills.
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Positive opinion of students on the use of wiki tools in
modernizing teaching process is clearly expressed.
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Information technology cannot replace the teacher, but may be
a useful complement to the classical language teaching method
in the classroom.
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Wiki as a teaching tool increases the intrinsic motivation of
students and positive transfer of knowledge, inspires creativity,
and allows teachers to be creators of modern teaching.